Natural resources such as oil and gas located in a subterranean formation can be recovered by drilling a wellbore down to the subterranean formation, typically while circulating a drilling fluid in the wellbore. After the wellbore is drilled, a string of pipe (e.g., casing) can be run in the wellbore. The drilling fluid is then usually circulated downwardly through the interior of the pipe and upwardly through the annulus between the exterior of the pipe and the walls of the wellbore, although other methodologies are known in the art.
Hydraulic cement compositions are commonly employed in the drilling, completion and repair of oil and gas wells. For example, hydraulic cement compositions are utilized in primary cementing operations whereby strings of pipe such as casing or liners are cemented into wellbores. In performing primary cementing, a hydraulic cement composition is pumped into the annular space between the walls of a wellbore and the exterior surfaces of a pipe string disposed therein to harden. After the cement is placed within the wellbore, a period of time is needed for the cement to cure and obtain enough mechanical strength for drilling operations to resume. This downtime is often referred to as “wait-on-cement”, or “WOC”. The WOC time ranges from a few hours to several days, depending on the difficulty and criticality of the cement job in question. It is desirable to reduce the WOC time, so that the crew can recommence the drilling operation, and thus reduce the total time and cost of operations. If operations are resumed prior to the cement obtaining sufficient mechanical strength, the structural integrity of the cement can be compromised. As such, systems generally are over-engineered to have very long setting (or thickening) times in order to ensure that the mix remains fluid until all of the cementitious material is in place, which can result in excessive WOC.